Rihanna is not happy with Snap for the tone-deaf ad the company let run on Snapchat. A couple of days ago, an advertisement on Snap appeared that alluded to Chris Brown’s violent assault on Rihanna back in 2009.
The advertisement, which was for a game called “Would You Rather,” asked if people would “rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown.” Snap has since removed the advertisement, but Rihanna today said she’s concerned about the message it sends to other survivors of domestic violence.

As of January 2018, 16.5 per cent of all retail sales in the UK were made online, an increase of 9.1 per cent year on year, yet many department stores have been slow to move online, with lacklustre websites and poor online browsing experiences.

But all is not lost for while experts agree there will be fewer department stores in the future, those willing to find new ways to fit into the lives of their customers can succeed.

“Long term, the format and what they sell will have to be adapted. It’s too much nondescript, overlapping type of product and not enough destination product in these shops,” says Mr Shiret.

L.L. Bean had been testing a data collection project that was attempting to determine the viability of the blockchain ledger for attaching sensors to coats and boots. The tests were scheduled to begin earlier this year and involved asking consumers to wear garments that would send information back to the Ethereum blockchain platform, which would have given L.L. Bean access to those customers’ demographic information.

However, the announcement of the project caused a stir, and not in the way L.L. Bean was probably hoping. Some found the program “creepy,” and a few media outlets (incorrectly) reported that L.L. Bean was looking to “continually track clothing after purchase.”

Apparently the creep-out factor won out, as Chad Leeder, who was heading up the project for L.L. Bean, confirmed in an email it had been shut down.

“A user discovered an offensive GIF sticker in our library, and we immediately removed it per our content guidelines.
After investigation of the incident, this sticker was available due to a bug in our content moderation filters specifically affecting GIF stickers. We have fixed the bug and have re-moderated all of the GIF stickers in our library.
The GIPHY staff is also further reviewing every GIF sticker by hand and should be finished shortly.
We take full responsibility for these recent events and sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended.”

You never have to worry about “fake news” entering your RSS timeline, though, because you’re the only one in charge of its inputs. There’s no recommendation algorithm or anything else, it’s just the feeds and sources you subscribed to, and without the constant “ping” alert of email newsletters. All those updates are just sitting there waiting for you for whenever you’re ready to go through them. If we could have educated people on the power of RSS to cut through the garbage and allow them to reclaim their reading power, we could have struck a serious blow against Facebook in particular, which would have suddenly seemed (as it always has to me) to be a shallow, vacuous wasteland of nothingness.

US pay-TV revenues peaked in 2015, at $101.71 billion (€82.51bn), according to the eighth edition of the North America Pay TV Forecasts report from Digital TV Research. A $26.58 billion decline (26 per cent) is forecast between 2015 and 2023 to take the total down to $75.13 billion.

Cable TV revenues peaked in 2010 at $54.11 billion, but they will fall to $36.75 billion by 2023. Cable will lose nearly 12 million subscribers between 2010 and 2023 (although most of the heaviest losses have already taken place).

Subscription losses slowed for traditional multichannel video providers in Q4 2017 (quarter ended December 31st, 2017), but the sector still tumbled for the full year, according to data compiled by Kagan, a group within S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Combined cable, direct broadcast satellite (DBS) and telecommunication (telco) multichannel subscriptions fell to 94 million, including 91.1 million residential customers. Combined, cable, DBS and telco subscriptions are now down approximately 7.4 million from their peak in 2012.

Though voice-activated devices like Amazon Alexa are appearing atop bookshelves and desks at record rates thanks to sales of smart speakers doubling in 2017 from the year prior, consumers still aren’t sold on using them as a means to shop.

According to a recent survey conducted by digital software company Episerver, of the 40 percent of respondents that own a voice-assisted device, only 60 percent actively use it and 66 percent have never used it to make a purchase. The study, which consulted 4,000 global consumers, concluded that a majority still fail to see voice as a viable pathway to purchase, despite fashion and beauty brands continuing to experiment with the technology as an alternative avenue to drive sales.

Facebook has been prevented from making use of UK citizens' WhatsApp data for purposes beyond the chat app itself.
The firm had announced in 2016 that it intended to tap into its subsidiary's records to give better friend suggestions and show more relevant ads.
However, the UK's information commissioner said this would have breached existing data protection laws.
The US firm has now promised not to access the information until it becomes compliant with a new set of rules.